More than 95% of Bislama words are of English origin; the remainder combines a few dozen words from French, as well as some vocabulary inherited from various languages of Vanuatu, essentially limited to flora and fauna terminology.[5] While the influence of these vernacular languages is low on the vocabulary side, it is very high in the morphosyntax. Bislama can be basically described as a language with an English vocabulary and an Oceanic grammar and phonology.[6]

During the period of "blackbirding", in the 1870s and 1880s, hundreds of thousands of Pacific islanders (many of them from the New Hebrides – now the Vanuatu archipelago) were taken as indentured labourers or sometimes kidnapped and forced to work on plantations, mainly in Queensland, Australia and Fiji.[7] With several languages being spoken in these plantations, a pidgin was formed, combining English vocabulary[8] with grammatical structures typical of languages in the region.[9] This early plantation pidgin is the origin not only of Bislama, but also of Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea and Pijin of the Solomon Islands, though not of Torres Strait Creole north of Australia.

This pidgin started spreading over the Vanuatu archipelago at the turn of the 20th century, as the survivors of blackbirding began to come back to their native islands: knowledge of this pidgin would facilitate communication not only with European traders and settlers, but also between native populations, and because Vanuatu is the most language-dense country in the world (one count puts it at 113 languages for a population of 225,000),[10] Bislama usefully serves as a lingua franca for communication between ni-Vanuatu, as well as with and even between foreigners. Although it has been a spoken-only language for most of its history, the first dictionary of Bislama was published in 1995.[11] This, along with its second edition in 2004 has helped to create a uniform spelling of written Bislama.

Besides Bislama, most ni-Vanuatu also know their local language, the local language of their father and that of their mother, and their spouse – and formal schools are taught in English or in French.

The name of Bislama (also referred to, especially in French, as "Bichelamar") comes via the early 19th century word "Beach-la-Mar" from pseudo-French "biche de mer" or "bêche de mer", sea cucumber, which itself comes from an alteration of the Portuguese "bicho do mar".[12] In the early 1840s, sea cucumbers were also harvested and dried at the same time that sandalwood was gathered. The names biche-la-mar and 'Sandalwood English' came to be associated with the kind of pidgin that came to be used by the local laborers between themselves, as well as their English-speaking overseers.[13]

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in an account of his travels through the Pacific in 1888 and 1889, "the natives themselves have often scraped up a little English ... or an efficient pidgin, what is called to the westward 'Beach-la-Mar'."[14] In Jack London's story "Yah! Yah! Yah!", one of his "South Sea Tales", there is repeated a reference to "a bastard lingo called bech-de-mer", and much of the story's dialogue is conducted in it.

Today, the word "bislama" itself is seldom used by younger speakers of Bislama to refer to sea slugs, as a new re-borrowing from pseudo-French "bêche de mer", which has taken the form "besdemea", has become more popular.[15]

Before 1995, an older orthography had an É, (now written E); AI and AU instead of AE and AO. For hiatus, AÏ and AÜ (now written AI and AU) were used, and M̄ was used for /mʷ/, and P̄ for /pʷ/[16][17][18] – the orthography after 1995 has no diacritics and writes these sounds as MW and PW.

Originally from the English word "belong", blong takes the place of 'of' or the genitive case in other languages. Just like of in English, it is one of the most widely used and versatile words in the language, and can indicate possession, country of origin, defining characteristics, intention, and others.

Verbs in Bislama usually consist of a stem word (borrowed from English, French or indigenous languages); most transitive verbs add to this a transitive suffix.[19]
The form of that suffix is /-em/, /-im/, or /-um/, depending on vowel harmony. If the last vowel of the verb's stem is either -u- or -i-, then that vowel will be copied into the transitive suffix. For all other stem vowels, the transitive suffix has its default form /-em/:

The personal pronouns of Bislama feature four grammatical numbers (singular, dual, trial and plural). They also encode the clusivity distinction: 1st person non-singular pronouns (equivalent of English we) are described as inclusive if they include the addressee (i.e. {you + I}, {you + I + others}), but exclusive otherwise (i.e. {I + other people}). Bislama pronouns do not decline.

Dialects exist, based mainly on different pronunciations in different areas which stem from the different sounds of the native languages. The future tense marker can be heard to be said as: Bambae, Mbae, Nambae, or Bae. There are also preferences for using Bislama or native words that vary from place to place, and most people insert English, French, or local language words to fill out Bislama. So in the capital city it is common to hear 'computer'; in other places you might hear 'ordinateur'.

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

Camden, William. 1979. Parallels in structure and lexicon and syntax between New Hebrides Bislama and the South Santo language spoken at Tangoa. In Papers in Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, No.2. Pacific Linguistics, A-57. Canberra: Australian National University. pp. 51–117.

^Emma Christopher, Cassandra Pybus and Marcus Buford Rediker (2007). Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World, University of California Press, pp 188–190. ISBN0-520-25206-3.

^In addition, whaling captains who picked up workforce from Africa and the Pacific Islands had already developed some sort of pidginized English. Modern Bislama bears a striking resemblance to Pidgin Englishes of West Africa[citation needed] (where the slave trade was also active at one time); it is possible that Bislama is one branch of an evolution of pidgins from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries[citation needed] when the first truly global trading system began. See Monogenetic theory of pidgins.